It took a while, but I was finally able to score the original, truth-serum version of Barack Obama's speech to the Democratic National Convention, before his campaign sanitizers rewrote it. Here it is:
Thank you.
Thank you — yes, thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you.
I am so proud and happy to be here, on this special night when we begin the final leg of our quest to take our country back. Yes, it is the Democrats' country. We own it, they hijacked it, but we're taking it back.
Of course, we transcend partisanship. There are no more red and blue states. What that means is people who don't agree with us have to start agreeing with us. Anyone who doesn't is a smear merchant, filled with hate and vitriol.
But on to the most important reason we're here. We're here for change. Change you can believe in. Real change. Change you need. Change you must make.
And we're going to start by making sure that all of our serfs ... uh, citizens realize that it is government, not private enterprise, that generates the wealth in this country.
My good opponent, the courageous but hopelessly deluded John McCain, wants to give billions of dollars to the oil companies.
His delusion is so extreme that he thinks those companies actually did some work, producing, refining and distributing a product, to earn that money. We know better. We know it all comes from the government. George W. Bush has been giving them all that money, and money to other rich people, for eight years. John McCain wants more of the same. But we're going to stop it. And then, of course, gas will be much cheaper.
Once you realize that, you can then make the necessary changes in your own life to prosper under my administration.
You may have heard it said in the past that the way to success in America is through hard work, thrift and entrepreneurial spirit. And yes, we will keep talking, endlessly, about "hard-working" people.
But we stand for everything that encourages people to work less. We support the union agenda: Higher pay for less work — shorter hours, more vacation days, more personal days, more funeral and family days, more holidays, more sick days. Yes, and more years off too — we stand for earlier retirement. None of this working for 40 or 45 years. You should be able to quit after 25 or 30 and collect a pension that equals what you made when you were working.
In fact, the worst thing you can do will be to work hard, save your money and become successful. If you do, we'll punish you for it. We'll take those obscene profits you earned and give it to people who vote for us. We'll call them "less fortunate," and call you "more fortunate," as if you didn't work for your money.
If we talk about people who are successful, it will not be to encourage you to follow their example and be successful yourself. It will be to encourage you to be resentful of them | to believe that it is not "fair" for them to have more money than you do.
Yes, the hottest thing you can be in our new American century is a victim. We're not going to talk about people who persevere and triumph over adversity | who lose a job and then hustle out and get another one. We're going to portray them as helpless to do anything without a government program. We're going to talk about grown men and women who voluntarily join the military as if they're grade school children who had no idea what they were doing.
We want to make you proud to be a victim. The possibilities are endless. We're going to accuse the other side of the "politics of fear," but then try to make you afraid that if you don't vote for us, you will all be single parents with no health insurance. And you don't just have to be a single parent. You can have thousands of dollars of debt on your credit cards. That's not your fault. It's the fault of the credit card companies. You shouldn't have to pay for what you bought. You're the victim — not the company that isn't going to get paid, or others who will probably have to pay higher interest rates because of you.
Same for mortgages. So what if you signed something. Just start shouting, "Predatory lender!!" Why should you have to pay back what you borrowed? "The rich" should do that for you.
We're talking about change, all right. We have a new American dream. The old, tired, worn-out dream of the last century was to be independent.
The new American dream is to have government pay all your bills.
Taylor Armerding is associate editorial page editor of The Eagle-Tribune. He may be reached at 978-946-2213 or at tarmerding@eagletribune.com. Read him daily at The Soapbox, the Eagle-Tribune blog at blogs.eagletribune.com/soapbox
